


As Milady Commands

by GhostofBambi



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-02-29 00:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18767158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostofBambi/pseuds/GhostofBambi
Summary: Modern AU: Gendry Baratheon's newest colleague is pretty bloody annoying. Or annoyingly bloody pretty. Either works.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kattyshack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/gifts).



> This isn't my usual Jily fic, I know, but this pairing has taken over my life, and I needed to start getting this out before season 8 ends and potentially breaks my heart (they BELONG together D & D you COWARDS). Please enjoy the prologue and doubtless there is a lot more to come soon!
> 
> This is a gift for my beautiful Katie, who gets to decide upon Sansa's love interest in this fic, but in the meantime I'm going to have a blast giving her multiple interested suitors. Love you, my darling <3

Her stupid pretty eyes drive him crazy.

They're huge and grey and long-lashed—two bright, wide pools of dewy, fairy-like innocence in a small, round face—and they _lie,_ because they make her look sweet, but she's a 90 pound hellbeast, and he wants to throw her tiny body out a window.

"I'm going to pick you up and fling you out that window," he'd threatened her after lunch on Friday, driven to his very last nerve.

"If you threw me out of the window," she'd replied, leveling him with a flat look and the disdainful lift of one thick, dark eyebrow, "I'd execute a perfect somersault and land on my feet. So try."

Gendry had been tempted. Really.

He'd gone and made himself a coffee instead. Two coffees. Arya tends to hassle him with accusations like "selfish" or "wanker," or "don't you love me?" if he comes back from the kitchen without a coffee for her.

Of course, she's also accused his coffee of tasting like piss, so he really can't win.

Life had been much easier when he'd worked with Gilly. Sweet, sensible Gilly, who spoke plain truths but did so kindly. Gilly would smile at him above her monitor every morning, ask him if he was eating well, make him steaming mugs of frothy cappuccino and soothe him after terrible Tinder dates (it was _never_ his fault, she'd assure him, dating is a chore these days). He and Gilly had started at Dragonfly together, and she was the best sort of person, but then she'd gone on maternity leave.

Then Gendry had been lumped with _her._

He could have shouldered the work alone for a year, but it just so happened that Arya had sustained a shoulder injury which kept her from her own job, and she wasn't the sort to rest upon her laurels. It all worked out nicely, according to Sansa. Her sister could fill in for Gilly for a while, keep herself occupied during her recovery. She was lovely, honestly, or so Sansa claimed. Smart. Practical. Spirited.

_Spirited._

Unhinged would be a better way of putting it.

She comes to work in jeans and baggy t-shirts, ignoring the office’s mandatory dress code, plays with a switchblade at her desk, doesn't like him, doesn't hide it. "Stop staring at me," she'll demand, the very second his eyes dare to flit across her face, reflexes quicker than a cat's, as if she spends her day waiting for a reason to piss him off, as if Gendry can help glancing at her three or four times an hour. She sits directly across from him. Where else is he supposed to look?

Her stupid pretty eyes catch _everything,_ and seek his out like she's offering a challenge.

"You spelled 'manuscript' without the i," she tells him today, frowning at her monitor, heavy brows knitted together as she reads. It's Monday, it's hot, and Gendry hasn't eaten. He's sweatily uncomfortable in his starched white shirt and trousers, _she's_ lounging in her seat in a Sheffield United jersey, her battered trainers kicked up on the desk. "Do you do this shit on purpose just to aggravate me?"

Annoyingly, Notts Forest are well behind Sheffield in the Championship. Gendry can't even claim footballing superiority over her, and that _burns._

He'd complain to HR—god knows he's got a comprehensive list of grievances—but Arya's baby brother is the head of the bloody department.

Also, that'd feel too much like losing.  

"Why do you even work here?" he asks her, a question he poses perennially, it seems. "Have you ever read a book in your life? Even once?"

"Have _you?"_ she retorts. _"Can_ you even read? I've never seen concrete proof."

"I can read," Gendry moodily insists, though he knows he's lost this spat by giving in to a swell of pride and deigning to answer her at all. He sounds like a five-year-old. A stupid five-year-old. _She_ makes him feel stupid. He's twenty-bloody-six. He lives by himself and pays his own bills. He can iron shirts and make his bed and fix things with his hands. Lord knows he should be above this kind of shit. "I left out one letter. It's not a big bloody deal."

"Tell that to Lannister when he gets his _manuskurpt_ back."

"You tell him."

"I'll have to, if you're incapable of spelling."

"You need your bloody arse slapped," he tells her flatly. "You know that?"

Predictably, her left eyebrow quirks a fraction as she swings her legs to the ground and straightens her posture. Gendry could draw that godforsaken quirk with his eyes closed. He knows when to expect it, makes bets with himself and hardly ever loses. Arya Stark never disappoints.

Then it's gone, and she deflates against her desk.

"Whatever gets you off," she says, leaning closer to her monitor, round face sinking out of view, sounding bored out of her mind.

Forget throwing. Throwing is for suckers.

He'll _catapult_ her out the bloody window.


	2. blue jean baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! First proper chapter! Featuring a special something for my Careless Texter/La Bamba readers. Yes, this fic WILL contain some text and IM conversations. Future chapters are going to be longer than this. I really had to cut this down to keep things concise and I have a LOT written for the next chapter, so stay tuned for more very shortly!

_The First Day_

Arya Stark isn't sleeping much lately.

Much, or well, or at all, really.

It's a cold March morning and her first day at her new job, so her newly minted insomnia is even less welcome than usual, but she can't bring herself to care that she's exhausted. She's only doing this thing as a favour to Sansa, so as far as Arya's concerned, it's more than enough that she'll turn up at the office. Any effort expended on top of that will be a fun added bonus, like finding a seventh chicken nugget in a box of six.

Naps are good for productivity, anyway.

So say the Spanish, and they seem pretty clued in.

She arrives at the office far too early, having risen before the sun and found herself at a loss for anything else to do. The slack-faced receptionist on the ground floor seems perplexed by the appearance of another person—as if he's guarding the Soul Stone in Vormir, not manning a desk in a building in Covent Garden, the fucking idiot—and hands over an access card with undisguised suspicion.

"What was your name again?" Arya asks him, blatantly ignoring the tag pinned to his deep v-neck tee.

"Julian," he replies.

"Julian," she coldly repeats, deciding on the spot that she will resent this hipster and his wire-brush man bun from now until the moment she departs the moral coil. "I'll remember that."

That's dramatic. But she's sleep deprived.

She normally functions like a well-oiled machine, hitting her mattress at ten and staying out like a light until seven, but a recent, drastic drop in physical activity has seen her tired less, restless more, and waking after a scraped handful of hours with an itchy desire to leap from her bed and swing punches at her pillow.

Which Arya can't do, on account of her shoulder.

She can't smack the receptionist either. That's less to do with her injury and more about not breaking the law. She'll have to dream up a stealthier punishment for his impertinence, like downloading dodgy cartoon porn to his computer when he pops to the loo and forwarding it to everyone in the building.

She texts Sansa in the elevator to let her know she's there and, predictably, her older sister is thrilled.

 _Great!_ reads Sansa's response. _I'll see you when I get there! So glad that you're excited! xxx_

 _I'm not excited, I have insomnia,_ Arya replies, but Sansa's next message consists solely of emojis—a bar graph, filing cabinets, paperclips, a printer, a stack of books and a few kissy faces—which means she’s buying an iced coffee and has written her sister's text off as hyperbole.

Arya really doesn't want to work in an office until Christmas.

To be fair, she doesn't understand why _anyone_ would want to work in an office, for any reason and for any amount of time, but she doesn't have much of a choice. She's going to be in recovery for a long time, all of her usual avenues of income have been strictly forbidden until she's better, and she's bored. Wildly bored. She has money enough to pay her bills without any struggle, but her spare time feels like an endless, gaping chasm. She can't swim, nor attempt any martial arts, can't play football and can't even go to archery without enduring horrendous pain.

She'd tried, once, battled through the session and trudged home feeling sick to find that somehow, Bran knew what she'd been doing—Theon _swears_ he didn't tattle—and told their mother. The resulting lecture was worse than any shoulder surgery could ever hope to aspire to. Arya hasn't so much as sniffed at a bow since.

Still, she'd hit five bullseyes with a torn rotator cuff, because she's a fucking winner.

Either way, she's been bored out of her mind.

Then she'd made the mistake of telling Sansa.

"Come and work for me for a while," her sister had implored, during a phone conversation in which Arya confessed herself so starved for entertainment that she'd watched two rom-coms from start to finish. "Gilly's just gone on maternity leave and you don't need a permanent place, so it works out perfectly!"

She would have refused outright, but for the love she bears her sister. Also the rom-coms. She'd actually enjoyed _When Harry Met Sally._ That's not a road she wants to find herself traversing.

So here Arya is, walking into an office like she's Jane bloody Fonda in _9 to 5_ ( _not_ a rom-com, sticks it to The Man, therefore perfectly acceptable), minus the blouse and skirt because she made Sansa promise that she wouldn't have to dress up like a stuffy pencil pusher. She's wearing jeans and a tank top and her favourite leather jacket. Anyone who has an issue with that can take their complaints to her brother, who will nod and jot it all down and toss it directly in the bin.

Nepotism is great, except for when it doesn't benefit her directly.

Dragonfly Publishing spans two floors of a larger, modern building, and Arya can see immediately that the decor is very much to Sansa's taste. The space is bright and open, with flattering lighting overhead, a consistent lemon colour scheme in the walls, chairs and desk dividers, and a fresh bouquet of yellow roses on the company receptionist's desk. In the two years which have passed since her wunderkind sister bought and revitalised the company, Arya has been to the office once, and that was before Sansa had it redecorated.

Luckily, she remembers where Sansa's office is, and knows that her new desk sits right outside it. Hitching her backpack slightly higher on her good shoulder, she passes the glass-walled meeting rooms, takes a right after the staff toilets, and immediately stops in her tracks.

Somebody else is here already, sitting at a desk with one earbud in, evidently none the wiser that he's no longer alone.

That somebody else...is singing.

He's singing Tiny Dancer—crooning it, actually—into the business end of a stapler.

He's singing Tiny Dancer _badly._

*******

"Are there rats in this building?" the girl asks him.

Gendry's hastily discarded earbud teeters for a second before it falls, rolling over the edge of his desk and landing on the polished ash floor with a click and a bounce, which creates an odd reverberation in the otherwise empty office.

The song is still playing from his Spotify, so he silences it quickly and shoves his phone across his desk as if she's caught him using it to cheat his way through an exam.

The earbud, though, is left to its own devices.

In truth, Gendry's a little afraid to bend down and retrieve it while she's looking at him like that. There's something unsettling about this stranger, who lifts a thick, dark eyebrow to regard him with disdain, one slender hand clasped around her backpack strap, the other slung across her own waist as if she's poised to draw a knife from within the folds of her faded leather jacket—all five-foot-nothing of this girl, big-eyed and dark haired and clearly unimpressed by what she's just witnessed.

Which is understandable, really. He's a fairly shitty singer.

This _girl,_ though.

She looks like an assassin.

A tiny, starry-eyed assassin, mind. One masterfully designed to lull her victims into a false sense of security with her diminutive stature and deceptively sweet face. Gendry's not sure who she is or why she's here, but he can tell right away that she is _not_ as sweet as her soft, pretty features suggest. Not sweet at all, by any means. No sweet person ever looked upon another with such undisguised contempt.

 _You're beautiful,_ he sort of wants to blurt out, though he feels like she might puncture his throat with a Chinese throwing star if he tried, and he's not sure where the impulse comes from. She's not his usual type, she's inexplicably talking about rats, and she's caught him warbling like a strangled cat, besides.

Instead he asks her, "What?"

That one thick eyebrow lifts a little higher. "Are there rats in the building?"

In this instance, repetition does not afford him any clarification. He hasn't a fucking clue what she's talking about.

"No?" he says, and feels like he's waking up from a general anaesthetic, sludge-brained and confused. Gendry is bad enough with attractive women under normal circumstances, so he can hardly be expected to whip out the charm when one suddenly walks in on his humiliating Elton John singalong. "There aren't—"

"I thought there might have been," the girl baldly interrupts, "and that maybe Sansa hired you to drive them away."

His brain seems to flicker. "What?"

"With your horrible singing."

"I'm sorry, wha—"

"You should be."

"What the—" A little burst of indignation snaps like a popsicle stick in the back of his head, because _what_ and _why_ and who the hell is this woman, and why does he deserve this shit at seven in the morning? Why is she being so mean? Why is any of this happening? "I'm sorry, but who even _are_ you?"

"I'm Arya Stark," she says, the way one might say, "I am the fourth horseman," but with a distinct lack of any discernible pomp or emotion, which doesn't make her presence any less unnerving. "Who are you?"

She's Sansa's sister, Gendry realises, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Sansa's. Sister.

And his new desk buddy, by extension.

Except...except she _can't_ be Sansa's sister, because Sansa is kind and stately and unerringly professional, like a United Nations dignitary, and generous, and friendly, and _tall._ They're _all_ tall, the Starks, Sansa and Robb and Rickon, even Bran, who somehow manages to tower over people whilst sitting in a wheelchair.

She can't be Sansa's sister because Gendry had been picturing someone tall and redheaded and very smartly dressed, and because Sansa used words like "fun" and "lovely" and "spirited" when describing her. This miniscule, scuff-booted sprite who just walked in is almost certainly none of those things.

"Sansa's sister?" he asks her, at a loss for anything else to say, and just to ensure she isn't a supremely indifferent hitwoman who has, in fact, been sent here to take him out.

"No, _I'm_ Sansa's sister," she replies, and expels an irritated breath from her nose. "What's your name?"

"My—it's Gendry."

"And my sister hired you?"

"Of course she hired me."

"So you didn't just come with the building," she suggests, flatly disbelieving, "like asbestos or something?"

"I’m not like _asbestos—"_

"But she _did_ hire you?" she interrupts again. "Like, you had an interview and based on that she decided to give you a job?"

"What, you think I conned my way in?"

She shrugs. "My sister's very charitable."

"Oh, lovely," Gendry hotly fires back, his brain jerking into action, beyond irritated by the unwarranted abuse, and by the fact that he's still sitting while she stares him down, like a squat duck waiting to be shot and cooked and served on a platter for dinner, which makes him feel that much weaker, somehow. "Yeah, thanks a bunch for that, really good first day, nice to meet you, too."

Her mouth lifts at one corner, like all of this is mildly amusing to her, and Gendry decides in a moment of speechless indignation—it's not _funny_ that she's pissed him off with such careless ease—that he will never, ever, _ever_ be nice to this woman, no matter how much it displeases Sansa, nor how much trouble he might land himself in for being a dick to the boss's sister.

She's rude, she's unpleasant, she's been completely nasty to him from the second she walked through the door, she's—

"I'm hungry," she announces, as she lets her backpack slide from her shoulder and hit the ground with a _thunk._ "I think I'll grab some breakfast in McDonald's while I wait for Sansa. D'you want anything?"

She's thrown cold water on him. _"What?"_

"I'm getting breakfast," she repeats, frowning as if slightly puzzled. "Do you want anything? I can pay."

"I don't— _no,"_ he returns.

"Suit yourself, then," says Arya, with another apathetic little shrug. "I'll be back in a bit. Nice to meet you, Gendry."

She spins on her toes like a dancer and strolls off, shoving her hands in her jacket pockets, leaving him slack-jawed and gawking and feeling like an idiot of utterly colossal proportions.

What the _ever-loving fuck_ has just happened?

*******

**Private WhatsApp conversation**

**Resumed by:** Gendry Baratheon, on March 18th, 2019, 07:12 a.m.

 **Members:** Theon Greyjoy, Gendry Baratheon

===================================

 **Gendry Baratheon:** Why didn't you tell me that Sansa's sister was a psychopath?

 **Theon Greyjoy:** ………………  
what??????

 **Gendry Baratheon:** ??????????????

 **Theon Greyjoy:** Arya??????

 **Gendry Baratheon:** Oh is that her name?  
I thought it was Aileen fucking Wuornos.

 **Theon Greyjoy:** wait, what?  
wasn't she from Florida??  
it's really offensive that you'd compare Arya to someone from Florida

 **Gendry Baratheon:** She wasn't from Florida she just murdered men IN Florida

 **Theon Greyjoy:** She was justified, then  
You know too much about serial killers  
Obsessed much?

 **Gendry Baratheon:** I've watched a couple of documentaries.  
That's not an obsession.

 **Theon Greyjoy:** OMG have you done the Florida Man meme???  
Google your birthday and then 'Florida Man' and it comes up with a headline from that day  
Mine is 'Florida Man Arrested for Trafficking Cocaine-Stuffed Lunchables in Ford F-150'  
How does that happen?

 **Gendry Baratheon:** Can you focus for a fucking second??  
Sansa's sister is a sociopath!!

 **Theon Greyjoy:** You said psychopath just a minute ago  
Now it's sociopath  
Which is it?

 **Gendry Baratheon:** Either way she's got a definite serial killer vibe.

 **Theon Greyjoy:** You're clearly into that so what's the problem  
Nude Florida man burns himself while dancing in flames, chanting 'gibberish'  
That's your one

 **Gendry Baratheon:** She said that I was like asbestos.  
ASBESTOS.  
For no reason whatsoever.

 **Theon Greyjoy:** lol what

 **Gendry Baratheon:** She said I was a horrible singer.

 **Theon Greyjoy:** You ARE a horrible singer  
Wait what???  
Where are you?

 **Gendry Baratheon:** I'm in the office.

 **Theon Greyjoy:** So why were you singing????

 **Gendry Baratheon:** I was singing QUIETLY with my headphones in because there was nobody else here  
I wasn't thinking about it  
I wasn't putting on a performance or anything  
But then she came in and she was all like  
Do we have rats because your singing is bad and will drive them all away

 **Theon Greyjoy:** LMFAO

 **Gendry Baratheon:** Then she acted like she was shocked that her sister hired me because she thinks I'm thick or something.  
It's NOT funny!

 **Theon Greyjoy:** It is tho

 **Gendry Baratheon:** Would you say that to someone you'd just met?!

 **Theon Greyjoy:** No but I'm a wimp.  
LOL what happened then???

 **Gendry Baratheon:** Idk she said she was going to get breakfast  
Asked if I wanted anything from Maccy Ds  
As if I'd take any food she offered

 **Theon Greyjoy:** Jesus  
Can't believe she offered to buy you breakfast  
That's a new level of callous  
Purest evil  
Truly spine-chilling  
Aileen Whatserface couldn't conceive

 **Gendry Baratheon:** Oh, piss off

 **Theon Greyjoy:** No seriously, call the police immediately  
Tell them the Hamburglar's after you

*******

**WhatsApp Group:** Work Group Chat

 **Created by:** Sansa Stark, on March 16th, 2019, 3:09 p.m.

 **Members:** Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, Brandon Stark

 **Chat resumed:** March 18th, 2019, 07:15 a.m.

===================================

_Arya Stark changed the subject to "Woah, Black Betty, Fam-a-Lam"_

**Sansa Stark:** Why?

 **Arya Stark:** Because  
Black Betty had a child

 **Brandon Stark:** bam-a-lam

 **Arya Stark:** The damn thing gone wild

 **Brandon Stark:** bam-a-lam

 **Sansa Stark:** We literally have a family chat group for stuff like this.  
This is meant to be a group for work discussions.

 **Brandon Stark:** In defence of Arya, you know what happens in the family chat when anyone tries to share song lyrics these days.

 **Sansa Stark:** Be nicer to Rickon, he's only fifteen.

 **Arya Stark:** No Sansa I'm fucking SICK of his DJ Khaled obsession.  
He won't even go down on his wife.  
Like who the fuck.

 **Brandon Stark:** bam-a-lam

_Sansa Stark changed the subject to "I'm the only nice one in this family"_

**Arya Stark:** That's not very work appropriate San.  
Anyway I met my desk buddy just now LOL  
Seemed surprised to see me, don't think he was expecting anyone to be there so early.

 **Brandon Stark:** Was he singing?

 **Arya Stark:** Yeah, Elton John.  
Does he do that a lot?

 **Brandon Stark:** Not that I've ever seen, but I've always suspected.

 **Sansa Stark:** Why the LOL?  
Arya?  
Do I have any reason to be concerned?

 **Arya Stark:** It's offensive to me that you think you do.

 **Sansa Stark:** What did you say to him?

 **Arya Stark:** Nothing. I was very complimentary.  
Probably.

 **Sansa Stark:** Gendry is one of my best employees and you're going to be working alongside him for as long as you're here. I told you to be nice to him. It was the one thing I asked.

 **Arya Stark:** I was nice.

 **Sansa Stark:** A regular human being's version of nice, Arya.

 **Arya Stark:** I was SUPER nice.  
I said wonderful things.

 **Sansa Stark:** I don't believe you.

 **Arya Stark:** WHY??  
I warmed to him instantly honestly you're worried about nothing.

 **Sansa Stark:** That literally inspires less confidence than if you didn't like him at all.

 **Arya Stark:** We bonded.  
Like hydrogen and oxygen.  
He's really fit actually.  
Like damn have you seen his arms???  
How does anyone concentrate with him sitting there?

 **Brandon Stark:** Are you the hydrogen or the oxygen in this situation?

 **Arya Stark:** Why is that important?

 **Brandon Stark:** For my own edification.

 **Sansa Stark:** If Gendry complains to Bran I swear I'll develop a stress migraine out of spite alone.

 **Arya Stark:** He won't complain to HR fucking hell.  
It's FINE we're already best friends.

 **Brandon Stark:** I'll clear up my morning for the inevitable meeting.


End file.
